Nicholas Keating-Casbarro – Creating Factions, Religion, and Government for Your Fictional World

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro is the author and creator of the Vitilarium Universe, a far-future sci-fi series following humanity after becoming multi-planetary. With seven books planned, Nicholas crafts character-focused stories exploring themes of power, corruption, government structure, and humanity's potential futures. A former medical professional turned author, Nicholas writes in an omniscient perspective similar to Frank Herbert's style, focusing on meaningful dialogue and immersive action scenes. He's expanded the Vitilarium world beyond books into comic book adaptations for Comic-Con audiences, working with illustrators Francisco Nilo, colorist Chandran Panusamy, and graphic designer Ahmed Gitar. Published through hybrid publisher Atmosphere Press, Nicholas maintains a massive Excel story guide tracking everything from character backstories to planetary exports across seven colonized worlds.

In this episode:

• The Vitilarium Universe: humanity's future as a multi-planetary civilization
• The Alcubierre drive: using exotic material for faster-than-light travel
• Discovering ancient alien ruins on Diorum, the seventh colonized planet
• Using conspiracy theories and "what if" questions for world-building
• Starting world-building with themes, not plot details
• Creating factions before characters (government, gangs, militias, religion)
• The Coalition for Prosperity: naming totalitarian governments ironically
• Writing the tenets of a future religion (with a no-cult disclaimer)
• The question-based method: every answer creates new questions to define
• The massive Excel story guide with unlimited tabs
• Building a survivalist protagonist who survives deadly fauna outside megacities
• Self-editing with story Bible and Book One PDF open for continuity
• Six rounds of proofreading to catch spelling and comma errors
• Working with editor John Smith to fix character motivation issues
• Maps of megacity Kairos and faction sigils for reader immersion
• Weaving world-building through character dialogue, not exposition dumps
• Treating plot holes as opportunities to add new technology or details
• Tools: Excel, Word, coffee, and nicotine (manual approach)
• Google Notebook LM: AI tool for querying your own manuscript
• Adapting books into comic series for Comic-Con crossover audience
• Working with Atmosphere Press hybrid publisher model

Resources mentioned:

• Vitilarium Series website: https://vitaleriumseries.com/
• Inside Vitilarium Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/InsideVitalerium/gift
• Atmosphere Press: https://atmospherepress.com/
• Google Notebook LM: https://notebooklm.google/

Connect with Nicholas Keating-Casbarro:

• Website: https://vitaleriumseries.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vitariumstudio/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vitarium.fb/reels/
• Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/discover/vitalerium-series-official-website

Connect with Teddy Smith:

• @teddyagsmith
• Website: https://publishingperformance.com/?ref=ywm3mtc
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/publishingperformance/
• Pinterest - https://nz.pinterest.com/publishingperformance/
• Instagram - https://instagram.com/publishingperformanceinsta
• Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHV6ltaUB4SULkU6JEMhFSw
• Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/publishing-performance/

Transcript

Teddy Smith: Welcome to the Publishing Performance Show, the podcast that helps self-published authors turn their passion into a profit. Now, I'm your host, Teddy Smith, and if you're serious about building a sustainable business, then you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with successful authors, industry experts, and publishing professionals who share their exact strategies. They use right now to how they've grown their business, grow their readership, increase their book sales, and essentially to make a bit more money. Now, whether you're just starting out or you're looking to scale your existing publishing business, you'll walk away from every episode with actionable insights you can implement immediately. Now, if you're new here, it would really, really help me out if you could subscribe either on Apple or Spotify or YouTube or wherever you are. 

Just simply hit the subscribe button. It really helps the show to get more reach, which means we can get better guests for you and we can help you out in more ways. All right, let's dive into this episode. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today, I'm really happy to be joined by Nicholas Keating-Casbarro, who is a author and also the founder of the Vistallarium universe. Welcome to the show, Nicholas. Thanks for having me, Teddy. No problem. 

We've chastised so much during our pre-calls that I feel like we're going to have to get all of those conversations out because I feel like we've really vibed together, which has quite been quite cool. Why don't you tell us a bit about the Vistallarium world? I'll give us a bit of information about the whole universe. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Yeah, sure. So, the Vistallarium universe follows humanity after we become multi-planetary. And it's a far future space-faring civilization that we become. The idea is that we start here on Earth where we are now. But the discovery of an exotic material, a new exotic material, one not native to Earth, unlike anything we've ever seen before, leads to the golden age of space exploration. And that's because that material ends up acting like the exotic material that would be used as fuel for an Alcubierre drive. And for those out there who don't know what an Alcubierre drive is, physicist Miguel Alcubierre posited in the nines in a paper that he wrote that there is a workaround to the faster than, excuse me, to the universal speed limit, which is the speed of light. And so he said, basically, we could travel faster than the speed of light if we were able to condense space in front of us and elongate it behind us, creating almost like an element where, have you ever been on one of those walkways in the airport where the walkway is moving underneath you? Yeah, 

Teddy Smith: and I've been to the town that you're visiting. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Yeah, yeah. So, technically, the space is shortening in front of you and getting longer behind you because it's kind of coming up and around, right? So, it'd be almost like an engine that could create that type of effect but with space itself. So, we colonize new planets, we explore the cosmos and the population booms. And yeah, so that we explore all sorts of different concepts in the Vitalarium universe. It is primarily a human story, so we're looking at things like government structure, social structure, corruption, and as well as a lot of really cool technology. 

Teddy Smith: I was going to, I think you kind of just answered it, but when the people are exploring the rest of the universe, do they come across different types of aliens and things like that as well, or is it mostly humans just exploring? So, secret. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : It's not a super secret. If you've read the book, you kind of find out at the end that there is something going on and we are being watched in some way. I allude to it, I don't define it just yet, although I have it very clearly defined in my head and you'll learn a lot more about it in book two, which will be coming out early next year. 

Oh, amazing. But one of the interesting things is when you kind of get dropped into the seventh colonized planet, which is the last planet that has been colonized in a very long time, what they find is they find the ruins of a very seemingly advanced ancient civilization that, for some reason, just disappeared. We don't know where they are, but their structures are still there and it leaves a lot of interesting questions. And so that was something that I'm really fascinated by, like ancient civilizations and mythology and a lot of these things. And I try and weave some of those interests into the story itself because that's what's fascinating to me, and that makes the writing flow very easily because if you're writing about what you like and what fascinates you, it certainly staves off the procrastination a little bit, a little bit. 

Teddy Smith: When you're researching, did you look into things like conspiracy theories as well? There's that one at the moment with the tunnels under the pyramid and all that sort of thing. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. You got it. As a fiction author, especially when you're writing a story, this kind of grand, like I have seven books planned, so that's a lot of content. You have to ask a lot of what-if questions, especially when you start getting into kind of the dystopian elements of a potential future civilization, you got to go down, you got to ask some what-if questions. What if that was the case? What would that lead to? How would a government have to cover up something like that? Or how would, what if there is, what if we are being watched in some way and there are a few people who know about it? 

How would they keep that a secret? And that can be fun and that it can also be exhausting at the same time because you show down some really interesting radios. But yeah, I try and take a good mix of, obviously hard sci-fi, I try and base everything in either current physics theory or perspective physics theory, just to try and make sure that I'm writing accurately. So I do read scientific papers, I read physics papers, publications, everything like that. 

And then yeah, I mix in a good amount of the what-if stuff, like let's dive down some conspiracy rabbit holes and see what people really think is going on. And then I try like, for instance, the name of the seventh planet is Deorum. And Deorum in Latin means of the gods. 

And they named it that because of the ruins that they found. Because it's like a big hovering question in the air that everyone seems to be kind of avoiding in normal society. And then yeah, just character focused stuff. I try and base a number of the characters on people I know in real life, because I feel like that adds a breath of, an extra breath of life into the character. 

Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. I think this kind of leads on to the main thing I want to talk about with you today, which is that world building. Because already just from the little bit we've talked about now, you can see how the world has got quite big and there's lots of different moving parts. 

I like the science, like the way that people move around. There's the characters, everything's going on. And that's kind of quite typical of this fantasy sort of sci-fi-ish type books. And that world building process is a question I get asked about all the time from people who are listening to my podcast. So what I wanted to sort of start with was when you're creating the world or the universe of Viscillarium, where did you begin with the world building? Did you have a particular structure that you followed in order to build that world out? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : It was funny. Funny, I literally just brought up my entire storyboard as you were asking that question because I started with the themes I wanted to write about. So what are the themes? So again, this is very much, despite the fact that it is sci-fi, I've been a sci-fi fan my whole life, so it made sense for me to write that. I wanted to talk, it's a human story, right? Who's reading it? 

A person. So I wanted to make it character focused. But the themes are important for kind of creating the foundation for, I feel like, where the story could go, what the elements are going to be that you're going to discuss. There's always some kind of, I find the sci-fi that I enjoy the most is one with some kind of a philosophical tone underneath. Not overt, because that can get a little preachy, but just a, I feel like sci-fi is a good way for us to explore different ways humanity can screw it all up and potentially write our way out of it, too, if it ever came to that. So I wanted to cover kind of the concept of overreaching power. 

I wanted to discuss what a civilization would look like in the future if we did have these sort of capabilities, if we were living on seven different planets in the known galaxy. What I wanted to explore different types of human personalities and the type of people that are driven to power or maybe attracted to power, the type of people who maybe aren't so. And I wanted to also explore kind of the nature of circumstances and how they can force someone to basically rediscover purpose, maybe push them in a direction they weren't expecting to go. I think that's pretty relevant considering I never thought I would write a book. That certainly kind of came out of left field for me. 

Teddy Smith: So with these characters you're talking about now, did you write down questions to ask yourself, what would these characters do? Or did you just say, I need a good guy, I need a bad guy, I need the government? How did you say, okay, these are the sort of characters I'm going to need? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : So I mean, you got to have a protagonist, you got to have an antagonist and there's probably going to be some supporting protagonists and antagonists depending upon the type of story that you're writing. For me, I'm writing multi-narrative, kind of a large multi-narrative storyline. So there were, there's a number of characters and when you first meet them, you're not always kind of sure who they're going to be or what they're going to be, what force they're going to be, kind of exemplifying in the book. But maybe with the exception of the protagonist, I think I make that pretty clear, although he is very morally gray when we first meet him. 

Okay. So I started with the themes, I then went to, who are the, you know, if we have, these are the things I want to talk about, I actually went to the factions first. So let's create a little bit of a structure for certain characters to kind of fall under. 

So I created a government for the planet, it's called the Coalition for Prosperity, which as far as totalitarian governments go, I'm sure you can imagine they're really not all about prosperity, at least not for everyone, maybe for themselves. And so we've got them. And then I wanted the protagonist to be kind of a loner. And so I set up a lot of other factions that could be involved just based on what exists now today. There are gangs that operate, there are militias that operate, there are other people within, you know, there are factions even within a government, oftentimes so to speak. 

And so I ended up kind of separating out different government members into where they're going to kind of fall on the morality spectrum, different people where they're going to fall in terms of throughout the kind of gritty world, the gritty future that you end up exploring. And I created, I made a religion. Religion is a prevalent thing now, who's to say it won't be in the future, right? It may look different, but you know, I'm sure that, you know, and anyone who is prone to, you know, the running a religion type is going to find a way to implement that in some way as we begin to expand further out. And so what does religion look like in the future? I had to write the tenets of a religion and create characters based off that. That was interesting. I'm thinking about putting a little notation at the front of my book that no one will ever, no one is ever allowed to turn this into a religion even after I die. 

Teddy Smith: Yeah, a disclaimer, the religion in this is entirely false. Yes, exactly. Yes. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Unless I'm the king, you know. But that was actually kind of, it turned out to be a really cool motive because I was able to funnel a lot of the philosophical elements that I discussed through that, I guess, entity, which became very helpful as the story continued to progress and continues to progress. 

Teddy Smith: When you were learning about the world building, did you have a structure that you wanted to follow? Like, was there a book or was there a course or was there something that you took or read that helped you to ask the right questions in order to build that world out? Or was it a case of, I've got this idea, I'm just going to run with it and see what happens? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : I just ran with it. Yeah. It probably should have, it may have shortened my learning curve a little bit, but at the same time, I just kind of, I realized that if I kept asking questions of myself, every time I answered those questions, it brought up new ones. Like, oh, well, if I'm defining this, well, then that needs to be defined too. Well, let's define it. Let's come up with a way to make it all mesh. And so, you know, I went from the themes to the factions to then the characters, and each character is, if we want them to be a well-rounded character and we want their personality, their profession, their mannerisms, all these things to make sense, well, we got to give them a backstory. So let's give them a short backstory. Let's talk about a little bit of what they exemplify as far as what their character stands for in general and in the scope of the story. 

What do they represent? And then, you know, all right, we've got seven planets. Let's, what do those planets look like? How many moons do they have? What's the government structure look like there? What's the social structure look like there in response to that? 

What are their exports due to, you know, different conditions on the planet? And like I said, the more you, I continued to ask questions, the more I filled up this thing and it just became my complete story guide, literally from front to back. What does that story guide look like now? So the story guide is, it's like a, I don't even know how many tabs it has now, but it's in Excel. I use Excel. It's just always been kind of the easiest method for me to organize my thoughts and separate out different aspects of whatever it is I'm working on. 

And so that's what I did. And so I have this, you know, however many tab monstrosity of an Excel document that's got everything from descriptions to, you know, character backstories to chapter breakdowns, notes on future books and future segments of the story, reference images, that was a big thing. One of the things that I wanted to give the character was a little bit of like a survivalist type of, okay, we'll call it skill because that would allow me to really show like how much of a badass that he is to be frank. And so, all right, well, if he's a survivalist, well, what's he dealing with out on the planet where he's doing work? He's basically doing freelance work for basically odd jobs for local gangs when you first meet him as an adult. 

And the reason why they contract with him is because he knows how to survive outside of the walls of the mega city in which 99, 999% of the population lives. So the rest of the planet is entirely untamed and pretty brutal. It's a vicious planet. There are a number of just deadly fauna, deadly flora and fauna out there. And he is a little bit of a savant when it comes to just knowing all of these types of animals, knowing all of these life forms and how to basically survive and make a living through that. And that allowed me to craft the character that was not only pretty rugged, but pretty talented in in the way of violence as well. That's the morally gray part I mentioned earlier. 

Teddy Smith: When you've got this huge spreadsheet of all of the stuff that, you know, the world, the government, all the characters, all that sort of thing, when it comes to writing it, do you feel like you have to go back up over each chapter just to check each part as you're writing? Do you have to sort of self edit as you're going? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : I do. That's something that I definitely started early on. And I'm glad I did because there are, and as I'm realizing now, like, you know, as I'm continuing to write more books, I'm only adding to that, you know, massive storyboard and all of the different lore that goes into the story. 

So I actually have not only the storyboard, but a PDF of book one open so I can command find and go, was that scar on the left side of his shoulder or the right side of his shoulder? Like little things like that for continuity. If you miss those, it can pull a reader out, especially if, you know, they become a fan of the series and they're like, wait a minute, he did that wrong. 

That'll pull you right out of the story and you don't want that to happen. It's engagement is huge. And then my goal was to create kind of an immersive experience with the series. 

Teddy Smith: So that was important. Yeah, even the first Harry Potter had like these mistakes in it. And they had to reprint the whole series. So those first ones with the spelling mistakes and there's like a potion mistake. They've had to, they're worth so much money now. Yeah. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : And it happens when you're writing something this kind of, this involved, there's always the potential for that. And if you start early in terms of making sure that you're, I do a couple of rounds of self editing just by myself before it even goes to my real editor. I start with, you I write the name of the next chapter, the first paragraph, and then I go back and just so I kind of remember where I wanted to start the chapter. Then I go back and I do a run through of the previous chapter I just wrote. 

And that's just kind of the nuts and bolts. Then when I'm done, I do one full read through of the entire book. And I look for, am I getting repetitive with this stuff? 

Am I, you know, am I, is my spelling atrocious and it can be and my commas are never in the right place. I assure you. And I try and get that stuff out of the way. And then I go back and I go, okay, are there any areas where I need to improve? Are there any plot holes? Are there any mistakes in terms of the little things like I mentioned? And then I'm like, okay, this is a solid, you know, kind of game ready first draft. And then we go from there. 

Teddy Smith: How does, when you, because you said you're talking about self-editing, then it goes to an editor. How do you give all this information to editors to make sure that they know, like, which parts to edit correctly? Or do you give them your Bible and say, can you go through this first? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : I refrain from giving the Bible out. Or I actually, I have an abridged version of it that takes out a lot of the stuff as far as like notes on future books that are in very, very rough state, but still capture a lot of the ideas I want to encompass. I may provide that. 

I may, may, you know, have a little bit of a meeting with them beforehand and like explain certain elements. My editor's name is John Smith. He's the most generic name on the planet, but he's a phenomenal editor. And he, and he caught a few really interesting things as far as, like he was like, you know, this character, this protagonist of yours, he does something later in the book that's kind of seems out of character for him. Like you don't really allude to that part of him at any point throughout the book. I was like, oh, that's a good point. 

So he's like, you need to define his motivations a little better. And I had to go back to the drawing board and say, all right, well, where's, where's their room for me to be able to do that? Where's there an opportunity to do that? And for this particular instance, I found a way to do that with one of my chapters was a little bit shorter than most of them. And I inserted a scene that was basically between him traveling from his house to where he was going for a mission, where it kind of showed that there's a little bit more of a, there is some empathy underneath the, the rough exterior. 

That is, you know, Roman Matthews, the protagonist. Yeah. And so, and it worked because I sent it back to him and he was like, oh, that's nice. Nicely done. And I take, you know, his, he takes a very collaborative approach to the editing, which I enjoy. 

And so I take his word like it's, like it's gospel. And then after that, we go to the proofreading, which it gets sent to two different people. So I had two proofreaders. And I went through six rounds of proofreading. And that's spelling commas in the right place, all that kind of stuff. 

I can't tell you how many times I use the improper spelling of discrete. You should get a tattooed on your arm. Like just, just. Yeah. One with an X through it. And then the real, the real way. Yeah. So that, that was, I mean, at that point, six read throughs, I almost got tired of reading my own book. So, but it's important, once again, to making sure that the final product is as polished and as presentable as humanly possible once you get it to market. 

Teddy Smith: Nice. Do you use any, in your books, do you use any visual tools, things like maps, timelines, family trees, or anything like that, even if it's not necessarily reader facing, do you have anything like that so that you can understand, like where everyone sits in the world? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Yes, I do. So I felt like that was important, especially given the numbers moving parts that the reader is kind of getting exposed to. And so I have a map of the mega city of Kairis and it's called Kairis and it's gigantic. You can literally see it from outer space. It's so big. 

Teddy Smith: And that's the main city on Earth, is it? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Oh no, that's the main city on planet Dioro, the seventh colonized planet, which is where the majority of the story takes place. So you basically the reader can say, oh, well, that guy, you know, that politician, that's the governor of Libris. 

Okay, well, where's Libris on the mapping? Okay, it helps to not only immerse the person and kind of, you know, get them hyped up about the story, but it also helps them understand where they are. And if the reader can understand where they are, they have a perspective that helps them understand all of the things that are happening within the scope of the world you've built. 

So that was important to me. I had a graphic designer mock that up for me and that is in the front of the book, as well as in book one, there's also a page where it has the sigils of each faction. So I know, I know before we hopped on, we had mentioned Harry Potter once or twice. But it's almost like, I thought of it as almost like a, hey, this is like a pick your own house kind of thing. 

This would be cool. And then you get to find out who each of those factions is as you get through the story, which I thought was fun. Once again, I thought it was a great way to just continue to elaborate on the world that I've built. And I plan to have more because now at this point, I have character mockups, basically character concepts for each of the, I would say, main and recurring characters that you see throughout the book. And I'm trying to find a way to basically insert those into the next book as well so that people even, you know, readers will have a reference to, you know, what that character might look like. I'm a little hesitant to put that in the book. 

I have it all on my website if anyone really wants to dive into the weeds with the world. But I also know that readers like to kind of create their own image of a character in their head while they're reading. So I don't want to tarnish that or take that away from them. And so I'm trying to find, I guess, a smart way to do that or a smart way to continue to insert more and more content. 

Teddy Smith: Yeah. Do you ever find yourself falling down like a world building rabbit hole where you find yourself spending more time building the world out and then you lose focus on the story? And do you have any ways of trying to get back from that if you do? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : That usually hasn't been my problem. Usually, I find that when the writing starts getting hard, either something is wrong with the direction I'm going in or something isn't well defined enough for me to be able to imagine it. Because the way I write, I almost write it as if I, like, I'm seeing the scene in my head, like, like it's a movie. And I am describing it, adding the dialogue, adding different elements to allude to other things that the reader may not know is going on yet. And if I can't really see what's going on, I know either something is not well defined or maybe there's a better way I could write this part. 

Or maybe I'm missing something. So it's almost like when the writing gets hard, I know that I need to go back to the drawing board and I need to, you know, just figure out a fix. 

Teddy Smith: Yeah. Do you ever find yourself having to work out ways of weaving the world into the story rather than just being like, this is the government, this is what it does, you know, just like laying it all out. Do you have any techniques for trying to get that into the story? Yeah. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : I like to do it through character dialogue a lot of the time. And I feel like that's an effective way to do it so that you're not just kind of writing a manuscript. There are times in which I do like a little bit of almost an omniscient perspective overview of like what kind of realm they're diving into or what part of the city this is. I'll have like a nice descriptive piece at the front of the chapter that kind of says, okay, like I, the reader goes, okay, I know my surroundings now, like I know what's going on. And then, you know, a character will start talking. But oftentimes, I'll have the characters discuss different elements of what's going on that weaves in different parts of the world. And that is, I feel a little bit more engaging at times. And I've always been a fan of like meaningful dialogue. Like some of the, like I love Quentin Tarantino's movies because he has, he always has at least a couple like long conversations between two characters where you get out of that scene, you're like, I know who that character is and what he stands for. And I know, you know, I can kind of see the conflict that may be building between them. And I find that to be fascinating. It's a great way to also weave in some of the philosophical elements that I want to discuss in the book, but also tell people about the world that they live in and maybe sometimes the harsh realities that, that entails. Yeah. 

Teddy Smith: It's so fascinating speaking because I'm kind of working on a sort of similar projects, but I'm just looking at all of the problems I'm now going to face as I come up. And so, as I'm speaking to you, I'm thinking, oh, I should really be writing this down rather than chatting to you. Yeah. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Well, you'll have the recording. But I don't look at them as problems. I look at them as opportunities to build out and flesh out the world and make it even better. Okay. I've used different new or prospective technologies to help me fill plot holes in the past. 

Okay. Like different ways that characters can, how is he going to get out of this? Like, there's no way. Well, maybe, you know, that's something that, you know, maybe I could allude to something earlier and utilize that as a fix for a situation later on. It's, everything's just an opportunity. There's no problems. Yeah. We're just, we're just having fun. 

Teddy Smith: When you're, apart from your massive spreadsheet that you use, do you have any other tools that you use to keep track of everything? Like any writing tools or anything like that? Or is it literally just the spreadsheet and that's it? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : I'm pretty manual when it comes to a lot of this stuff, which, and, and maybe that's just because I've, you know, there, there are different ways I could definitely use some of the, I know I've heard about a couple of really interesting tools, just listening to your podcast where I could maybe improve my, my organization and things like that. But for the most part, with me, it's just, it's just a spreadsheet, a Word document, and a good cup of coffee and a little bit of nicotine. That'll, that'll do it. 

Teddy Smith: When I interviewed Joanna Penn on this show, she's a like, podcast, quite famous self-published author, and she used a tool called Google Notebook LM, which is, it uses AI, but it's based on your own inputs into it. So it's not like using AI to make creative decisions for you. You put your own book in there, your manuscripts, you know, your, the documents you're talking about. And then you can ask questions of it. 

So that point that you talked about earlier, or where did I, where did that guy have the skulls on his left side or right side? Like you could ask it questions about your manuscripts and it'll bring that back up, which that's what I'm probably going to use when I start writing. Have you, have you, have you had a look at that one? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Oh, so you mentioned that actually in a meeting we had a little while ago. I have since looked that up. I have not utilized it yet, but as I continue to build out the series, I think that's definitely something that I'm going to be implementing, because it would just shorten my, it's just going to help me condense the time that it takes to, you know, go back and check things. 

Teddy Smith: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, that would be huge. It's really cool. I use it for my podcast notes, like looking up, oh, who's I insfew about this? Who's, who's spoken about this tool? 

Like who, who I insfewed that has mentioned fantasy, you know, I can then, it helps me for networking and all those sort of things. Really clever. I think that's what we use for this too. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : That sounds like a really helpful tool. So consider me sold. I just need to implement now. The thing is that the, the, the reason why I feel like I haven't jumped into a lot of some of the other writing aids that I know a lot of other writers use is because my focus has been on making sure that I kind of continue to expand the series into other outlets of media as well. And I think we might have talked about this prior, but I've begun adapting the book series into a comic book series as well. 

Oh, nice. And the reason I did that is because a lot of the conventions that I'm going to, I'm doing book fairs and doing all that stuff, but I'm also doing comic cons, because there's a lot of sci-fi crossover at comic cons, you know, the, the, the attendees who are going to these conventions, they like sci-fi too. The book has been doing great there. And if I'm going to a comic con, I should probably have a comic. And that seems also like the next logical step in terms of bringing a pictorial version of this to life, something I could do for, you know, it wasn't going to totally break the bank. And it would help my content basically appeal to a whole different, different market of, you know, potential fans. 

Teddy Smith: Do you, do you do the drawings yourself? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : No, I am not. No, I have a very talented illustrator. His name is Francisco Nilo, and a very talented colorist who does the color and the kind of accents and everything else. His name is Chandran Panasami. And then for the, the graphic design for the guy who designed all the sigils, helped me build the map, helped me do the book covers. 

His name is Ahmed Gitar, also incredibly talented. I've lucked out in that I haven't had to go through too many, 1099 folks of, you know, contractors to be able to find the people that really understood what I was going for. And they've just been a dream to work with. 

Teddy Smith: So all the guys working for you sound like they've got really good names for characters in your book. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : You know what they do, actually. I hadn't even thought of that, but you're spot on there. Yeah. Maybe I ought to give them an homage. 

Teddy Smith: I just want to finish by talking about the books a bit more like in the world as well. Because we've talked a lot about the process and things like that. I kind of want to hear a bit more about your favorite parts of the Vitalirian world that you've built. So like which parts do you, which parts are your favorite, which do you enjoy writing the most? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : I know I mentioned I like writing the meaningful dialogue scenes. Those are fun for me. There's, there's one chapter toward the end that really sums up kind of everything that has happened and everything that is about to happen. And it's just the chapter is just a really kind of, kind of a heated conversation between two people over, over a medical table, believe it or not. That was a fun chapter. Also the hardest chapter I had to write. 

That one was edited more times than I can count to make sure that that aligned with the themes I was going for, that the characters dialogue seemed true, that I was giving the right props and I had the right balance between both characters. That was a very tough chapter to write, but it was a fun, a fun one for me. 

Teddy Smith: Did you know that chapter was coming before? Like, did you, like when you started writing, were you like, this chapter's got to come at some point? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Yes, that one I did. There, I'd say there are certain elements of the story that are certain, major, major events that are hardwired into the story, but how I get to them, I kind of, I try and let the writing flow. 

Yeah. So I'd say I do like a little bit of a mix of both, letting the characters lead and, you know, having some events that happen. And oftentimes, there are events that are outside of their control. And so that helps, again, in terms of making sure that it kind of feels real. But I also love writing the action scenes. 

That's been a lot of fun for me. I try and, I write, I don't know if you, have you ever read Frank Herbert's work, like Dune and the Dune series or something like that? 

Teddy Smith: Yes, I interviewed the guy, not Frank Herbert, but Kevin Anderson, who wrote, who's written the following books. I interviewed him on this podcast, as well. Awesome. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Oh, that's cool. That's cool. I'll have to go back and listen to that one. I'd write in the omniscient perspective, kind of similar to the way that Frank Herbert does. And I tried to give it a purpose. And once again, you find out what that purpose is toward the end of the book, actually, at the very end of the book. But I wanted the, as far as the action scenes are concerned, I wanted, I wanted to give the reader like an edge of your seat experience. 

I didn't want it. I feel like certain action scenes that I've read in other books, and maybe I just haven't read the right books as well. This isn't a shot at anyone, so to speak. But I feel like they gloss over certain things that happen, and they're not taking into account like, what's going on inside the character who's in this? Like, what's going through his mind? What is his heart beating through his chest? Is he, does he slip and he dropped something? 

Is he dashing for cover? What does it feel like to have plasma charges flying over your head? And I wanted to really kind of encompass the excitement and the thrill and the fear associated with that. And so I really, really enjoyed writing the action scenes in this book. 

Teddy Smith: Yeah, I like that. Because I know a lot of people who have written books have got like sex scenes, things like that. They've got chat GPT to write some of the sex scenes because they're like, I don't really want to do that bit. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : No, I, that is one thing I will say. I have never used chat GPT to write anything. The only thing I've used AI for so far has been to help me shorten my learning curve when it comes to knowing what I don't know about certain scientific elements that I want to incorporate because I, you know, I'm not a physicist. I have a little bit of a medical background. So that kind of helped a little bit. But I wanted to, you know, here's a scientific concept. 

Give me everything out there that's written about it and what a little base summary. And then I'll still go and read those publications after. Yeah. So that I really get the gist of it. And it's not just, you know, what AI is kind of giving to me. I'll see what I can pull of it. 

Because sometimes I find, you know, a few gems that are kind of tucked away. And, you know, the actual full paper that I'm like, Oh, I could do this. Like this is that I could make it. You pick up on little things the more you expose yourself to just new stuff. So this whole process is kind of ignited like a new passion for learning with me in terms of like what my interests are. So that's been really fun. 

Teddy Smith: Awesome. That's, it's been so great talking to you. I mean, building this world out is so fascinating. Do you have any advice that you'd give to people who were looking at building something quite complicated like the sort of book you're talking about? Or if you show back and change anything that way you've done, like, is there any advice around that sort of thing that you could help people with? Yeah. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : I would say don't get bogged down with trying to make it perfect right from the get go. Because there's always an opportunity to go back and change things. I have done it on countless occasions throughout writing the book where, like I said, I'm coming across kind of a like a I'm stumped situation and I'm not really sure how to get this character out of this or I'm not really sure how to make these events line up. And I've gone back and I've changed things in prior chapters that actually make it work because it's been alluded to before. There's, I can find ways to say like without saying it like this might be important to remember. For later on and write it in such a way that it kind of sticks with people as they're reading. So when they get to that point and I find the fix for it, they're like, oh, that's how he did it. 

Like, cool. So don't worry about like making it perfect right from the get go. You will always have opportunities to go back and fix it. Even after I first put my book on, you know, all the platforms where it's listed now and kind of made it available for purchase. A week later, I was just reading through part of one of the books or part of my first book as I was writing book two. 

And I was like, shoot, like I didn't I never put that in or this is like, and I went back and changed it and within a week it was fixed. And then, you know, I was as a first time author. There weren't too many books that flew off the shelf just yet. 

There weren't too many of the erroneous copies that are out there. But like I'm saying, because I feel like that need for perfection right from the get go can lead to paralysis, which can lead to procrastination. And I feel like that's where a lot of that comes from. But if you go into it and you're like, everything is fixable. Everything is editable. Everything is fluid. Right from the get go, it'll pour out of you. 

Teddy Smith: And I noticed your book is with atmosphere press. How did you find that process of being like represented having sort of being having a publisher rather than do it all completely self published? 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : So they are an indie publisher. Yeah, they they they it's a hybrid type publisher. So essentially, you you cover certain costs from the front from the get go. 

Teddy Smith: I actually that's why I was noticed it. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Oh, yeah, yeah. Dr. Courtwright. Yeah, he's a nice guy. I'll tell you what, I was introduced to atmosphere through a family friend. And I guess at the time, one of her best friends had worked at atmosphere. And she said, look, you know, just I'll set I'll help you set up a meeting and if they like it, great. And if not, you have a work to do. 

So I said, okay. And I reviewed every all of the different things that they would provide in terms of a service as a publisher. And it was extensive. And I compared it with one or two other publishers that were kind of in the same boat. 

And they didn't even come close. So I was like, you know what, this is this is a good route. Let's might as well. 

Let's go for it. And they did they did right by me. They taught me a lot of things. 

They once again taught me what I didn't know I didn't know. They told me all the things that I need to begin marketing the book and set me up with my editor and my proofreaders. They set me up with someone who would help me make a cover. 

Although I ended up finding my own graphic designer for that. She's someone who was, you know, just fitting the theme I was going for a little better. It's kind of a dark book. Like I'll acknowledge that right now. 

It's it's it's a wild ride, but it can get dark. So I wanted the cover to encompass that. They helped me submit for reviews. They helped me submit for awards. They taught me everything along the way as well. So basically, this is how we're doing this. This is how you would do this. And they were extremely helpful. It was overall a very, very good process. Good. I have to let him know. Yeah. 

Teddy Smith: Well, thanks so much for coming on. I mean, it's been fascinating talking to you. So if people want to find more information about you, like where's the best place to get your books or read about you or any of that sort of stuff. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Yeah, sure. So my website is vidilariumseries.com. I know vidilarium is kind of a new bit of nomenclature I'm trying to throw out into the sphere. It's vital, E-R-I-U-M. It's vidilariumseries.com. You can find me on pretty much any social media under the sun at vidilarium series. 

I have a Patreon. It's called Inside Vidilarium. And you can find the book on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, BooksandMillion.com. The audio book is on Amazon and Audible. And the comic books are on my website. 

Teddy Smith: Amazing. Well, it's great. I mean, so thanks so much for coming on. It's been great chatting. And yeah, I'll put all the links in the show notes. So everyone can go and find the book. And we'll speak again soon. 

Nicholas Keating-Casbarro : Sounds good. It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me on, Ted. 

Teddy Smith: Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Publishing Formant show. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I absolutely love chatting to authors, writers and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, I want to tell you about our Publishing Formant starter packs. These are curated episodes and collections organized by topic that makes it super easy to find the exact content you're looking for. So whether you're wanting to deep dive into marketing strategies, explore productivity techniques, or focus on any specific area of publishing, we've organized our episodes into tug-of-play lists just for you. 

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